Ex-teachers union boss gets $242,000 state pension

Underfunded state system supports more than 100 teachers union officials

October 23, 2011|By Ray Long, Tribune reporter

SPRINGFIELD — — Reg Weaver receives a state pension of $242,657 a year, not because it's based on his last salary as a teacher, but because he gets to count the $300,000-plus check he made as president of the National Education Association.

It's one of the highest pensions paid by the heavily indebted Illinois Teachers' Retirement System.

Weaver, whose last salary as a south suburban teacher was $60,000, is one of 116 active and inactive members of the Teachers' Retirement System who can base their retirement income on their salaries and service in the National Education Association, the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers or the Illinois Association of School Boards, another interest group that lobbies in Springfield. It is a tiny subset of the 360,000 participants in the state system.

Previous investigations by the Tribune and WGN-TV have shown how city union leaders are dramatically boosting their retirement benefits by tapping into Chicago's public pensions. But they are not the only ones benefiting from legislative changes.

About the time Weaver headed to Washington for the NEA in the late 1990s, Illinois officials added a provision to pension law that would let him and others base an Illinois public teacher pension on a national union salary.

Weaver, now 72, said that's fair.

"As long as it is not prohibited by law, sure," Weaver said. "If it was prohibited by law, then it would not have been done."

He said he taught science and health and coached several sports in the Harvey school system. Before going national, Weaver served as president of the Illinois Education Association. He splits time between homes in Chicago and Maryland, he said.

Weaver said that as a union official, he did not lobby for the change in state law that allowed him to use the larger national union's paycheck as the basis for his retirement income.

"For me and what I did, I worked seven days a week, 24 hours a day," Weaver said. "There was not a time when someone was not able to get in touch with me. You ask my family. I didn't take vacation. I worked in the office long hours. I worked anywhere from 15 hours, 16 hours a day.

"If you want to divide that $240,000 into the amount of hours spent, I think you would find that the per hour was probably not much at all, considering the work that had to be done."

His pension is the second-highest at the Teachers' Retirement System, officials said, ranking behind only a retired public school superintendent at the wealthy New Trier Township High.

The state law that opened the door to allowing union leaders to tie their union salaries and service to state teachers pensions took effect in 1987, signed by Republican Gov. James R. Thompson after he easily won his fourth and final term.

Of the 116 people collecting retirement checks or in the pipeline, at least 30 of them receive a state teachers pension of more than $100,000 a year.

Among the higher-profile people who collect a Teachers' Retirement System pension based on a union salary is former Illinois AFL-CIO President Margaret Blackshere, 70, of Niles. She receives $107,867 a year from the teachers pension system, where she started collecting in 1994. She was a teacher and a ranking leader of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.

"I felt that when I worked for the IFT, I was doing the best I could for the IFT members," Blackshere said. "So I thought I had a right for (the union salary) to be counted in the pensions."

Soon after she began her pension, she was recruited back to work by the Illinois AFL-CIO. When she left as president in 2007, she said she made $120,000 a year. For her service at the AFL-CIO, Blackshere said she now also receives a pension of nearly $36,000 a year.